the monster with the needle teeth
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: Ino grows up and learns a few things here and there.


"So you try to be happy when you aren't breathing, in between heartbeats, you put your brave little toaster face on and you think it means something, sweetheart, I'm going to eat you alive, little girl…"

The kunoichi is old, or as old as they get, late thirties, maybe, early forties, with matted dark hair and sallow skin dented around a grotesquely beautiful face, lips bloody and chapped, teeth yellowed, some missing, and Ino finds it in her to feel pity, but then pushes it aside with the other ugly things she isn't supposed to feel, and says nothing instead.

It isn't her place to speak, not right now, not ever, she isn't meant to speak in this room, she is means to ask, to question, to demand, but that can be done just as easily without words, Ibiki's taught her that much and no one could ever accuse her that she wasn't a good learner.

She raises a pale plucked eyebrow instead, presses her glossed lips together, and drums her painted nails on the metal table, where the kunoichi is strapped.

She'd asked Ibiki, early on in her apprenticeship if there was a dress code for the T&I and he'd laughed his deep rumbling laugh, half-mocking her, and said that she could dress however she damn well pleased so long as results came.

"I don't care how you do it, you get me results, and I won't say a thing about anything else. Come to work late, skip days, don't hand in reports, get drunk on working hours… get them to talk and I won't care."

And Ino had listened, taken it to heart, that only results matter, that the end will justify all means, and so she stuffed all the ugly things in her pretty head behind a safe trapdoor, and she pitied the person who would ever fall through, and spent long hours in front of her mirror telling herself in a hushed whisper _I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, _much like she used to, before the Chuunin exams tell herself _I'm a strong independent woman who needs no man or team_, and it had felt right.

She sneered at the older kunoichi, bared her perfect gleaming white teeth at her in between the pink flesh of her youthful lips, in a silent insult. She did not pity. she _disdained_.

"Don't you smile your pretty smile at me, little girl, you know nothing, I will bite your pretty face off, you can do whatever, but I will not speak."

Ino smiled again, the smile cutting sharply across her face, and drummed her nails on the table and thought to herself 'maybe I should go by Sakura's place tonight and see if she wants to go out, or maybe stay in with a bottle of sake and watch a cheesy movie', and her smile faltered and grew soft for only a second and the other kunoichi was frightened.

"You know nothing," she repeated frantically, "you know nothing, nothing."

but Ino continued to smile and drum her nails, thinking to herself pretty thoughts that befitted a pretty girl:

'maybe I should go by my beautician again to get my hair trimmed, and my eyebrows plucked, I'm thinking of trying to add some honey highlights to my hair, I'll have to ask Sakura what she thinks, I definitely need a new manicure, this pink color doesn't really suit my hands, how didn't I notice, I should demand my pay from Ibiki, those shoes on that shop window won't jump into my arms out of their own free will, maybe I should see how Shikamaru and Chouji are doing and go get barbecue, I wonder if Naruto will be coming by the village soon, I swear I will castrate Sasuke with the big tweezers over there on that wall as soon as I see his pretty boy face, thinking of pretty boys Neji is looking good these days, and he just made ANBU captain too, mmm'

And the old kunoichi was looking at her, shaking in her restraints, as she stared at thepretty blonde girl with the pretty smile, who was drumming long pink nails on the metal by her thigh, and she repeated to herself that the girl, the little girl stupid girl she knows nothing, she is food, she is meat, nothing, nothing.

The girl moves, and her heels go tap-tap-tap as she flips her hair behind her shoulder prettily.

The old kunoichi is terrified of all the pretty. Pretty is fake. pretty is learned. Pretty a secondary thing, a thin shimmering veil, pretty is life's natural genjutsu and here is a girl who does everything prettily and her eyes are large and blue and cold and –

And Ino brings her hands up, pretty pale hands, and forms signs and slips easily out of her body, sheds it like a second skin that she no longer needs and invades the brittle tired mind of the other woman, filters though thoughts and memories, and the fear, the fear of her, because she is young and pretty, and she sinks her metaphorical claws into the knowledge she needs and drinks it down like a fine wine, and then untangles herself from the other mind and returns into her own body, and gracefully gets up from the floor, which is dirty and poorly mopped (should have a word with the janitor, I should, she thinks as she brushes the back of her informal light pants) and walks back towards the shaking woman on the table who has tears in her eyes, and is biting her lips, and INo smiles prettily and says to her, speaking for the first time since she entered the room hours ago,

"I have needles in my mouth," and smiles, for the first time not prettily, but rather with her teeth bared, lips pulled over her pale pink gums to reveal too many teeth, sharp white and gleaming. "I could eat you alive"

And the woman trashes wildly, as if she hopes to somehow sink into the metal table and away from the pretty girl, but she can't, and she has to see, has to look, look at that cavernous pink mouth, and the sharp gleaming perfect white teeth.

Ino drums with her nails one last time, and the woman screams, and her screams echo off of the walls, and give Ino a headache so she walks out, slams the door and is done with work for the day.

People part in her path as she strides confidently, pretty head held high, and they smile at her and greet her and ask if she wants to sign the birthday card for Izumi, or go out drinking with so-and-so and maybe she'd like ot have coffee some time, and she thinks to herself that she is the one who knows everything and they – they know nothing, because they never bother to.

She enters Ibiki's office, and she tells him "Results", walks over to him, and climbs in his lap, sits on his knees, she is so small and fral compared to him, and she drags her small pale hands over his leather clad thighs, as she leans (breasts pressing against his chest) to whisper in his ear that she knows, she knows.

He reaches past her, one hand on the small of her back, the other holding a pen and writes it down, chin resting on her milky shoulder, and the scent of her vanilla shampoo nearly intoxicating, and he tells her

"Good job."

He can feel a razor smirk against his neck as she kisses the rough skin there and whispers in his ear

"Your heart is jackhammering like a hummingbird's wings."

He rolls his massive shoulders in a surprisingly graceful shrug and laughs his booming laughter, no longer mocking her.

"I have a pretty girl in my lap. How often do you think that happens?"

but she laughs her own tinkling silver pretty laugh and mouths against his neck 'Anko', and then hops off swiftly and leaves, still giggling to herself.

they think she knows nothing, but pretty is deadly, and she's got needles in her mouth.


End file.
